Top Assignment

by George Harmon Coxe

‘It’s a fair assumption,’ Palmer said, ‘until something better comes along. Did Banton have an alibi?’

  ‘None that’s worth a damn.’

  He did not expand the statement, but after a while he said: ‘We think we’ve got the time narrowed down.’ He mentioned a street not far from the Back Bay Station and when Palmer visualized the address he knew it as a block of small shops and wholesalers which, while active enough in daytime, would be deserted at two in the morning.

  ‘There are some flats over two of those stores’, Neilson added. ‘We located a couple that say they heard two shots in the street. By the time they got out of bed and opened the window, all they saw was a car turning the corner. They had the impression that they heard two cars start up, one right after the shots.’

  He turned the pages of a report and said: ‘They looked at the clock. According to them, the shots came just about one-forty … We gave it a test run’, he said. ‘If Flynn had the motor running, he could have made it to his apartment in seven minutes. If we figure one-forty-seven or eight, it jibes with the wife’s story.’

  ‘If there were two cars,’ Palmer said, ‘the killer followed him home.’

  ‘Could be’, Neilson said non-committally.

  Palmer re-examined the story Banton had told him, but saw no point in repeating it now. He was also acutely conscious that the police were working with no knowledge of the part Henkel and Muller might have played in the case. Ethel Kovalik’s landlady had described them briefly and the records at the Bond Hotel had been checked, but beyond that the police apparently had no clue.

  Until now Palmer had never been close enough to a big-city murder investigation to be in a position to withhold evidence. He had often pictured himself as working closely with the police, and it bothered him a little as he sat there listening to Neilson until he remembered that in this instance he had no choice in the matter. The F.B.I. was working on that angle, and he had been told, in the publisher’s presence, to keep quiet about that aspect of the case.

  So he thanked Neilson and went back to the Bulletin, and some of those in the city room kidded him—he was not sure if it was all good-natured—about his assignment. They made cracks about being tied to desks and working as wage-and-hour slaves while he was out drawing his salary for living the life of Riley. Only O’Neil gave him a big wink and a quiet word of encouragement.

  Kelly, the managing editor, was busy when Palmer knocked, but he leaned back to ask how things were going. Palmer said he thought he was making progress and asked if Kelly had time to listen to the details. Kelly said no.

  ‘Just keep at it,’ he said, ‘until you get something definite or until Mr. Austin decides he’s had enough.’ He started to get back to work when his eye caught a slip of paper and he said: ‘Oh, here’s something. I don’t know if it’s any help or not, but we queried the Washington bureau and had them check the War Department for details on the Kovalik woman’s husband.’

  He paused to read the notes he had made. ‘According to army records, Guy Kovalik enlisted in Chicago in ’42, giving Cedarville, Idaho as his home address. In 1946 he was arrested in Germany for theft and black-market dealing, but he broke out of the stockade before he could be sentenced, shooting an officer while doing so but not fatally. Still listed as a deserter.’

  Back at his desk, Palmer made a note of the information and then, because a couple of rewrite men who were otherwise unoccupied at the time persisted in questioning him about his activities, he put his notes in his pocket and left the building. He had just unlocked the door of his apartment when he heard the phone ring, and he stepped to it quickly, leaving the door ajar.

  ‘Is this Mr. Palmer?’ a strange voice asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is John Destler.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr. Destler.’

  ‘I called to see if by any chance my niece was with you.’

  ‘Why, no.’

  ‘Oh. Well’—he paused and continued apologetically—‘I thought you might have seen her. She told me about your talk the other day and what you were working on, and I thought perhaps you’d come out here—’

  Palmer cut in on the fumbling words. ‘Where did she say she was going?’

  ‘To the neighbourhood movie. She thought she’d be back by ten-thirty or so. I called just now, but there was no answer, so I know it must be closed. Well, maybe she stopped somewhere for ice cream or something.’

  ‘Probably’, Palmer said.

  ‘Yes … Well, thank you. I’m sorry to bother you.’

  Palmer heard the click as the connection was broken and he stood there, still holding the instrument as a feeling of uneasiness began to mingle with his thoughts. In that moment a picture of Janet Evans came to him and he heard, in fancy, the spirited sound of her voice and was reassured.

  That she had stopped somewhere seemed obvious, for she was a modern, independent young woman used to looking out for herself. It was silly for Destler to worry needlessly just because she was a few minutes late. This is what he told himself, but it did not seem to help this strange intuitive feeling of alarm that would not be put aside.

  He looked at the clock on the bookcase and saw that it was a quarter past eleven. He went over and closed the door and took off his jacket. He put his notes on the desk and sat down at the typewriter, but when he tried to concentrate he found it impossible. In spite of himself, the growing pressure of his anxiety continued to predominate his thoughts, and finally, unable to sit still any longer, he jumped up, grabbed his jacket, and hurriedly left the room.

  From the time he got into the car until he braked it before the Destler house was no more than ten minutes, which was very good even for that time of night. Throughout the ride his commonsense told him that he was probably acting like an old woman, and when he went up the walk to the porch, he was prepared to find the girl safely home and her uncle properly apologetic for being so nervous and concerned over the telephone.

  Thus conditioned mentally, he was not at all prepared for what actually happened.

  For the man who opened the door almost before the bell stopped ringing was a thin, small, wild-eyed figure who stared out at him in the semi-darkness as if at an apparition before the gleam of recognition came. With that a hand snaked out to clamp on Palmer’s arm and then, before he could speak, he heard the voice, a frantic, piteous sound that was horrible to hear.

  ‘She’s gone’, he wailed. ‘She’s gone … They’ve got her. They just called. Just now.’

  Palmer pushed into the little hall and closed the door as something cold crawled up his spine and fastened there. He knew instinctively that this was real, and as he stood there, all tight inside, Destler babbled on.

  Later Palmer was to understand that it was lucky he had come just when he did. For if there had been time for Destler to think things out, he would not have made some of the remarks that now came tumbling from his lips. As it was, he was still panicky with shock, and he spoke unthinkingly, as if what he knew was too much to bear alone.

  ‘I’m to wait’, he said. ‘Just wait until they call again … To tell no one … If they get the blanks and seal, she’ll be all right … They’ll call me—tell me what I must do. They wouldn’t say when … They hung up.’

  Somehow Palmer got the man back into the living-room and forced him into a chair. He asked if there was a drink in the house and Destler looked blankly at him and shook his head.

  ‘I knew something had happened’, he cried. ‘When she didn’t come and didn’t come—’

  Palmer cut him off brusquely, for by that time he was just as upset as Destler but in a different way. He knew what the man had said, had heard each syllable distinctly, but until he had the details he simply refused to believe that Janet Evans had been kidnapped. And so, while the strange, insidious fears expanded in the unlit silent places of his mind, reaction came and he spoke harshly, demanding facts.

  ‘All right, all right’, he snapped. ‘Take it easy! Tell me just how it
happened.’

  ‘The phone rang and I answered it and they said—’

  ‘Who said? … Henkel? Muller?’

  ‘Henkel. He said: “Destler? We got the girl tonight and she’ll be all right if you do just what we say”.’ He hesitated, swallowing visibly. ‘I couldn’t answer them. I couldn’t think what to say. I didn’t believe it and yet I knew it must be so.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘He said: “This is strictly between us. Tell anybody or tip off the cops and it’ll be just too bad for—”’

  He broke off suddenly, mouth tightening and a new kind of fear mirrored in his eyes.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you even that’, he said. ‘I promised.’

  ‘Now, wait a minute.’

  ‘No.’ Destler shook his head. ‘You’re a newspaperman. It’ll be in the papers … You’ll tell the police’, he said, his voice shrill.

  The sight of all that distress so openly displayed jarred Palmer and filled him with quick compassion. But he also knew that he had to get the rest of the story, and now he reached out and grabbed the little man and shook him hard.

  ‘Listen to me, damn it!’ he said. ‘If I wanted to go to the police, I wouldn’t bother with you at all. You want Janet back, don’t you? Well, so do I. And you can’t handle a thing like this by yourself. I promise you now I won’t go to the police. Maybe the F.B.I. yes, because they know how to handle things like this better than we do, but not until you and I have talked it over … Now, do you want to be sensible and tell me the rest of it or should I walk out of here and print the story?’

  It was mostly bluff and shameful to hear, but it brought results. For after one long, hard look Destler seemed to get himself in hand. He leaned back and bobbed his head.

  ‘Yes’, he said. ‘You’re right. Janet liked you. She told me. If I can’t trust you—’

  ‘You can’, Palmer said and was grateful for that one thing the little man had told him. ‘But what I want to know now is why they took her at all.’

  He waited. When there was no answer he said: ‘Look, there’s got to be a reason. Was it money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked her to come’, Destler said, as though he had not heard the question. ‘If she’d stayed in New York, it never would have happened. I had no right to ask her.’

  ‘Why did they take her?’ Palmer said again, and again Destler either ignored the question or pretended he did not hear.

  He sat with his hands between his knees and as Palmer watched him he saw that age had begun to bend the fingers at the knuckles. Now Destler was twisting them and pulling at them, his narrow shoulders hunched and his gaze evasive. When there was still no reply, Palmer’s mind went back to recall the things Destler had first said and from that came a glimmer of understanding.

  The blanks and the seal.

  Those were the words. What blanks and what seal? What blanks could he mean but the blanks he had once filled out in his job?

  ‘So that’s it’, he said, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what you had in the safe-deposit box—in that package you made Janet take to the parcel locker. Birth-certificate blanks, the seal you used. You never turned them in, did you?’

  Destler looked back at him, a new force working on him that compressed his mouth, and suddenly Palmer knew the answer was not important. He had an idea the story would be told later, but it could wait. For now the only thing that mattered was Janet Evans and, remembering what he had told Destler, he was more than ever aware that this was something that they could not handle by themselves.

  Glancing round until he saw the telephone, he rose and went over to it. There was a directory on the lower shelf of the little table, but before he could pick it up Destler spoke.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Call the publisher.’

  ‘No. You can’t take this to the newspaper. You promised—’

  ‘I’m not going to the newspaper.’ Palmer spoke sharply, then took a breath, his angular face shiny now because the strain was working on him too. He knew he was going to call Mr. Austin whether Destler liked it or not, but he wanted to make the little man understand why this was necessary.

  ‘Look’, he said. ‘You can’t go through life all by yourself. You have to live with people and get along with them and trust them. Sometimes you make a mistake, yes. Sometimes you trust the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean you can’t trust anybody. It’s better to make a mistake now and then and maybe profit by it than to trust nobody and go it alone. You trusted Janet. You’ve trusted me up to a point. Now I’ve got to trust someone too because we can’t do this by ourselves; it’s too important. I think I know what I’m doing’, he said, out of breath now as he began to dial and aware that he could have expressed himself more clearly.

  The voice that answered at Frederick Austin’s residence asked who was calling. ‘I’ll see, sir’, the man said when Palmer identified himself. Then, a few seconds later, Austin’s voice came to him.

  ‘Yes, Larry’, he said. ‘Have you stumbled across something?’

  ‘A kidnapping, I think.’

  ‘A kidnapping? In connection with the Kovalik case?’

  ‘There has to be some connection’, Palmer said. ‘To get anything at all I had to promise not to go to the police, and I don’t think I should go to the office. I don’t want to talk too much over the phone either, but if you have the time I could be there in fifteen minutes.’

  Austin displayed no hesitation. ‘Certainly. Come right along.’

  The quick acceptance of his suggestion gave Palmer a mental lift and he turned to Destler as he rang off.

  ‘I’ll be back’, he said. ‘Probably in a half or three quarters of an hour. You’ll have to wait, but I don’t think you’ll get a call tonight.’

  He started to move away, but when he saw how helpless and utterly dejected the little man looked, he realized that the hardest job had fallen to Destler—the waiting. He, Palmer, would be out and doing things, and Destler could only trust him and wait, and now he tried to think of something reassuring he could say.

  The words that came disappointed him because they were platitudes. Janet would be all right, he said; they could lick this if they did the right things; Destler had to believe that …

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FREDERICK AUSTIN LIVED in a large and ancient frame-and-stone house that sat on a rise well back from a quiet Brookline street. A light glowed from above the front door as Palmer rolled up the driveway, and when he had parked under the empty porte-cochère he hurried up the stone steps.

  An elderly man in a black alpaca jacket answered his ring. ‘This way, sir’, he said, and led Palmer back along a wide hall to a room near the rear, a squarish, book-lined room with high windows on two sides.

  Austin sat in a leather chair beside a floor lamp which furnished the only illumination and tinged his grey hair with silver. He wore a dark smoking-jacket, a straight-stemmed briar was clamped between his teeth, and when he saw Palmer he put aside the paper-filled Manilla folder he had been working on.

  ‘Hello, Larry’, he said, and pointed to a near-by chair with the stem of his pipe. ‘Sit down and tell me about it.’

  Palmer discovered he was a little out of breath, a condition brought about more by the surge of mental pressures than by any physical effort. Aware of this now, he concentrated on speaking calmly as he related the facts that seemed to him essential. Austin did not interrupt until he had finished and then he asked the same question Palmer had asked Destler.

  ‘What do they want the girl for? What do they expect to get?’

  On this point Palmer was evasive, though he did not sound so. Because he himself was not yet sure about the blanks and seal Destler had mentioned, he said he did not know but hoped to find out when he had a chance.

  ‘Everything seems to come back to those tw
o Communist hoodlums’, Austin said. ‘The Kovalik woman mentioned them in the beginning and you never get far without running into them—or their influence—again. Somehow they were hooked up with Leo Flynn.’

  ‘I think Flynn sold them phony birth certificates.’

  ‘And they know Destler made out those certificates originally, right? So it’s obvious that either Destler has something they want bad enough to try kidnapping or he is a threat to them in some way.’

  He tapped the stem of the pipe lightly against his teeth and regarded Palmer in a moment of thought. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t think we should go to the police.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Also—and maybe this isn’t the right thing for a reporter to say—I don’t think there should be any publicity.’

  ‘Under the circumstances,’ Austin said, ‘I think it’s the proper thing for a good reporter to say.’

  ‘But I can’t see us working alone on it’, Palmer said. ‘I think we have to let the F.B.I. know about the girl. They have more experience in such things than anybody else and they operate quietly. From what I know of them, the less publicity on a case the better they like it.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘But I don’t think I’m the one to tell them. I know Tom Hansen pretty well, but you—I mean, you’re the publisher and you can talk to them on a different level—’ He paused, fumbling now, and Austin took him off the hook.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, ‘but let’s not disparage your influence … I’ll get in touch with the Agent-in-Charge right away. I happen to know him personally … Now what about you?’

  Palmer blinked, not sure what Austin meant until he said:

  ‘I suppose you have some sort of plan.’

  ‘Yes’, Palmer said, though until that instant he had not even considered it. ‘I want to go back to Destler’s and stay with him.’

  ‘I was about to suggest it.’

  ‘He’s crazy about that girl and feels he’s responsible. But he could panic very easily.’ He hesitated, not sure what he was about to say was proper, but saying it nevertheless. ‘I’ve got a personal interest in this now. I’ve met Janet Evans. I—well, I like her. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, and I’d just as soon do this on my own. I mean, the Bulletin doesn’t have to keep me on salary for that, and no one knows how long it will be—’